Dean Baker is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, DC. He writes a weekly column for the Guardian Unlimited (UK), and his blog, Beat the Press, features commentary on economic reporting. His analyses have appeared in many major publications, including the Atlantic Monthly, the Washington Post, the London Financial Times, and the New York Daily News. He received his Ph.D in economics from the University of Michigan.
Baker is author of many books, including Plunder and Blunder: The Rise and Fall of the Bubble Economy (Polipoint Press, 2009); The United States Since 1980 (Cambridge University Press, 2007); and The Conservative Nanny State: How the Wealthy Use the Government to Stay Rich and Get Richer (Center for Economic and Policy Research, 2006).
The Real Story Behind Job Creation
When the labour department announced that the US economy had created 216,000 jobs in March, it set off a round of celebrations throughout Washington policy circles. The word in the New York Times, the Washington Post and other major news outlets was that the economy was back on course; we ...
The Deficit Hawks Target Nurses and Firefighters
Many people might think that the country's problems stem from the fact that too much money has been going to the very rich. Over the last three decades, the richest one percent of the population has increased its share of national income by almost 10 percentage points (Excel spreadsheet). This ...
Guess which policy your central bank will pursue
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) held a conference last week devoted to re-examining macroeconomics in the wake of the economic crisis. This conference was evidence of a glasnost that would have been unimaginable a decade ago. One of the organisers and speakers was Nobel Laureate Joe Stiglitz, a man who ...
The Key to Rebuilding Workers' Power: Unrig the Rules
The battle in Wisconsin over the rights of public-sector workers holds the potential to reawaken workers across the country to demand their fair share of the economic pie. This could be an important turning point. However, if workers are to make real progress, they must move to alter the rules ...
Who reaps the rewards of productivity?
Washington politicians, like politicians everywhere in the west, have been running around with shrill cries about how we are adding trillions of dollars to the national debt and that this burden will impoverish our children and grandchildren. It is almost impossible to pick up a newspaper or listen to a ...
Spending Cuts Won't Help 25 Million Hurting for Jobs
The politicians in Washington and the media have been busy setting the scene for a great battle over the 2011 budget. The newly empowered congressional Republicans are demanding large cuts to get spending under control. President Obama and the Democrats in the Senate promise to defend important public programs. This ...
Right to Work: Representation Without Taxation
Part of Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker's union-busting agenda is including a "right to work" rule for public-sector employees. Several other Republican governors are considering similar measures for both the public and private sectors. Insofar as they succeed, these right-to-work measures will seriously weaken the bargaining power of workers. "Right to ...
Greenspan's Incompetence Badgers Wisconsin's Workers
Alan Greenspan has been strangely missing from the fierce battle over the future of public sector unions in Wisconsin and other states. His absence is strange because he bears more responsibility for the current conflict than anyone else alive. The reason is simple. Mr. Greenspan's incredible incompetence in allowing the ...
Unions badgering Wisconsin's finances?
You have to give Gov. Walker and his wealthy patrons credit. Here we have a situation where Wall Street fat cats wrecked the economy - people like Richard Fuld, Robert Rubin, and Angelo Mozilo - and they've somehow managed to blame schoolteachers and the highway patrol. Now we have a ...
The President as Storyteller-in-Chief
The celebrations surrounding the 100th anniversary of Ronald Reagan's birth overlooked an important part of Reagan's success: his ability to craft an image to serve as the focus of his political argument. When he was running for president in 1980 Reagan invented two great tales that highlighted the worldview he ...
As we mark the 100th anniversary of Ronald Reagan’s birth, his most important legacy has gone largely overlooked. Reagan helped to put a caricature of politics at the center of the national debate and it remains there to this day. In Reagan’s caricature the central divide between progressives and conservatives, ...
The Great British Austerity Experiment
Three months ago, I noted that the United States might benefit from the pain being suffered by the citizens of the United Kingdom. The reason was the new coalition government's commitment to prosperity through austerity. As predicted, this looks very much like a path to pain and stagnation, not healthy ...
Debts Should be Honored, Except When the Money Is Owed to Working People
This seems to be the lesson that our nation's leaders are trying to pound home to us. According to the New York Times, members of Congress are secretly running around in closets and back alleys working up a law allowing states to declare bankruptcy.According to the article, a main goal ...
That is the question that supporters of Social Security should be asking as we brace for President Obama's State of the Union address next week. Specifically, the question is whether Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid will keep up his spirited defense of Social Security or whether he will buckle to ...
Making Social Security More Progressive: The Games They Play in Washington
The insiders in Washington really really want to cut Social Security, and they are prepared to say or do anything to do it. Among the latest lines is that they want to make Social Security more "progressive." This sort of rhetoric appeared in a report from the liberal Center for ...
The Progressive Case Against Obama’s New Team
Most reports on the selection of William Daley as President Obama’s new chief of staff and Gene Sperling as the head of his National Economic Council included a few lines of criticism from progressives who were unhappy with these picks. Since there was not much space for the argument, these ...
Obama's tax deal: read the small print
The enthusiasm of the US business press for the compromise tax package worked out by President Obama and Republicans in Congress led to a mini-euphoria of upbeat economic projections for 2011. While the economy will do better with this tax package than if no deal were forthcoming, much of the ...
The Green Economy Is Here, and It Ain't Pretty
Many of us have long advocated a green economy where jobs were generated in sectors like alternative energy and recycling. It was our hope that this economy could be both environmentally friendly and offer opportunities for high and rising living standards. Well, we've now got a green economy and there's ...
Compromise on Social Security and Medicare? Why My Center-Left Friends Are Wrong
In recent days several center-left blogger/columnists have suggested that progressives should be happy to cut a deal now on Social Security and other issues related to the budget. The argument is that the cuts being put forward by the commissions are not that onerous, they don't involve privatization, and we ...
Aqua Buddha, the Number 21 and the Deficit Commission
At this point most of the country has heard the story of "Aqua Buddha." According to an anonymous account, during his college days, Kentucky Sen.-elect Rand Paul dragged a woman down to a river and told her to bow down to the river, which he referred to as "Aqua Buddha." ...
The Wall Street TARP Gang Wants to Take Away Your Social Security
Just over two years ago, the Wall Streeters were running around Congress and the media saying that if they don't immediately get $700 billion the world will end. Since they own large chunks of both, they quickly got their money. Even more important than the hundreds of billions of loans ...
The DeFazio Congressional Race: Stop Wall Street Before It Kills Again
After wrecking the economy and putting themselves at the edge of bankruptcy, the Wall Street gang had a few bad months. But now that profits and bonuses are again at record highs, they are back on the offensive. With their bank accounts overflowing and Congress now officially up for sale ...
Timothy Geithner forecloses on the moratorium debate
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is good at telling fairy tales. Geithner first became known to the general public in September of 2008. Back then, he was head of the New York Federal Reserve Board. He was part of the triumvirate, along with Federal Reserve Board chairman Ben Bernanke and then ...
Foreclosure Moratorium: Cracking Down on Liar Liens
As we all know, there is a major philosophical divide in US politics. On the one hand, there are those who think it is the role of government to help ensure that the vast majority of the population can enjoy a decent standard of living. On the other side are ...
Virtually everyone has had the experience of being forced to pay a late fee or a bank penalty because of some fine-print provision that we overlooked. Sometimes, begging by good customers can win forbearance, but usually we are held to the written terms of the contract, no matter how buried ...
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February 5th, 2013
Tax Games and Redistributing Income Upward
The corporate profit share of national income is near a post-World War II high. The share of income going to the richest 1 percent is ...
January 30th, 2013
Timothy Geithner Saved Wall Street, Not the Economy
The accolades for Timothy Geithner came on so thick and heavy in the last week that it's necessary for those of us in the reality-based ...
December 19th, 2012
Michigan Republicans Deny Police Officers and Firefighters the Right to Work
That is what the headlines would say if anyone really believed that the anti-union laws passed last week in Michigan actually had anything to do ...
December 3rd, 2012
The Serious People Are on the War Path
Fans of arithmetic everywhere know that the large deficits of the last five years are the result of the economic downturn caused by the collapse ...
October 15th, 2012
The wrecking society: Economics today
There is an old story from the heyday of the Soviet Union. As part of their May Day celebrations they were parading their latest weapon ...
September 2nd, 2012
Poverty: The New Growth Industry in America
Recent trends in poverty rates should have the country furious at its leaders. When we get the data for 2011 next month, we are likely ...
August 21st, 2012
'Courage' in Washington Doesn't Have the Same Meaning
Last week Vice President Joe Biden did a courageous thing, he promised an audience in southern Virginia that there will be no cuts whatsoever to ...
February 18th, 2011
Unions badgering Wisconsin's finances?
You have to give Gov. Walker and his wealthy patrons credit. Here we have a situation where Wall Street fat cats wrecked the economy - ...
July 21st, 2011
The Drive to Cut Social Security: Why Are the Gang of Six Scared of Information?
A central theme of the Gang of Six's deficit reduction crusade is lowering the annual cost of living for Social Security. They propose to change ...
August 21st, 2012
'Courage' in Washington Doesn't Have the Same Meaning
Last week Vice President Joe Biden did a courageous thing, he promised an audience in southern Virginia that there will be no cuts whatsoever to ...
October 18th, 2010
Foreclosure Moratorium: Cracking Down on Liar Liens
As we all know, there is a major philosophical divide in US politics. On the one hand, there are those who think it is the ...
July 28th, 2011
President Obama Doesn't Understand the Origins of the Deficit
That is what he told the country in his address on Monday night. President Obama described a situation in which the government had been perpetually ...
August 31st, 2011
Do Liberals Have to Be Losers?
National political discussion of the economics and budgets over the last two decades have been dominated by the debate over President Clinton's tax increase and ...
August 29th, 2011
President Obama's job creation mirage
President Obama has discovered how serious the recession is. That's what he told an audience in Chicago last week. To be fair, he was referring ...
'Dirty Wars' by Jeremy Scahill
Why have you started a comedy festival in northern Michigan in the middle of winter?
Because if you were here in the dead of winter in the middle of nowhere (which is actually somewhere to us), you'd need a few laughs too ... Continue Reading
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